never forget the stirring scenes in the church meetings or the eloquent
words of patriotism and faith with which the pastor bade his “boys”
Godspeed as they went forth into the great struggle. One Sunday
evening in April, 1861, he spoke feelingly of the impending crisis.
He was so prophetic, outlining so accurately what afterward proved
to be the extent and course of the secession movement, that many of
his hearers have since thought him to have been almost inspired. When
he had finished, he requested three of his “boys” who had enlisted,
one of whom had that very day been admitted to the church, to step to
the desk. Then, amid a scene such as is rarely witnessed in a sacred
edifice, he talked to them personally, while the large audience showed
great sympathy and the liveliest interest. When the enthusiasm had
reached its highest pitch, he drew from under his desk three revolvers
and passed them to the young men, bidding them go forth in the name
of God, in a cause which he declared to be as holy as any that ever
a people contended for. In 1865, referring feelingly to the services
of these young men in the field, he said: “They departed with the
prayers and good wishes of the congregation. One of them, but nineteen
years old, fell at Gettysburg; another,[2] having been twice severely
wounded, has returned with honor, and the third, having received three
wounds, and led his company at the storming of Fort Fisher, still
remains a captain in the service.”
[2] Readers will be interested to know that Mr. Kimball, the author of
this chapter, is here referred to.--W. B. M.
The work was often attended by interesting and sometimes humorous
incidents. During a meeting in the reading room of the Home one evening
an intoxicated sailor created a disturbance at the door. He wanted to
enter, and had to be held back by force. The meeting closed, and the
“flying artillery,” under the leadership of Mr. Kellogg, was about
starting for the nine o’clock prayer-meeting at the rooms of the Young
Men’s Christian Association in Tremont Temple. The inebriate took it
into his head to go too. He was reasoned with, but without effect. “You
fellows have got a good thing,” said he, “and I want some of it.” The
leader and his “body-guard” started, and sure enough, the disciple
of Bacchus followed. Mr. Kellogg protested, but in vain, and finally
ordered “the flying artillery” to take the double-quick. The man then
showed that he, too, could sprint a bit even if he did happen to be
“loaded.” He managed to keep the party in sight, and although he met
many obstacles and collided with a horse-car in crossing Washington
Street, he succeeded in landing a fairly good second. He was not
allowed to enter the prayer-meeting, however, as he was still inclined
to be noisy, but was “held” in an adjoining room. The young men got
him back to the Home after the meeting, and he again declared it his
purpose to have religion anyhow, in spite of opposition. Next morning
he appeared, demanded a pen, and with the air of a usurper of a
throne about to banish all who had in any way opposed him, placed his
name upon the temperance pledge. That evening in the prayer-meeting
he requested prayers. He gave his heart to Christ, became a devoted
worker, and a year afterward, returning from a voyage, was found to be
still in the faith.
But sinners had to be brought to repentance ordinarily. They rarely
came unsought, like this poor wayfarer, and thus Mr. Kellogg and his
helpers always found plenty to do. It was an inspiring scene when the
leader and his “body-guard” set out for the prayer-meeting upon the
receiving-ship _Ohio_ or returned therefrom. In going, they usually met
at the Young Men’s Christian Association, proceeding thence via “Foot
and Walker’s line,” two by two, keeping step to the music of their own
voices. “The Old Mountain Tree,” “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” and many
other popular songs of the day, as well as hymns, were sung. Among
the favorite hymns was “Say, brothers, will you meet us?” It had that
stirring chorus, “Glory, glory, hallelujah.” This was sung a great
deal, and it finally became the foundation of the famous “John Brown
Song,” to the rhythm of which thousands marched in the great war for
the nation’s life.
No small part of Mr. Kellogg’s success in this work came from his
intimate knowledge of the seaman’s nature. Sailors are in many ways
peculiar, and in order to be of service to them a worker must proceed
understandingly. They regard themselves as in a measure set apart from
their fellow-men. One of them once wrote:--
“I am alone--the wide, wide world
Holds not a heart that beats for me;
I’ve seen my brightest hopes grow dim,
As fades the twilight o’er the sea.”
That Mr. Kellogg understood this loneliness and had a large sympathy
for the men “that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in
great waters,” these eloquent words of his well show: “In respect to
the great mass of seamen, they neither own land, build houses, nor rear
families. They neither give nor receive those sympathies and attentions
which create among men a mutual dependence and attachment. When they
are sick, no circle of neighbors and friends watch by their bedside
and minister to their necessities, but the walls of the hospital, if
on shore, receive them and conceal their sorrows from observation. No
kindred follow them to the grave and erect the memorial stone. They
are not, in the expressive language of Scripture, ’gathered unto their
fathers,’ but they are buried on the shores of foreign lands, or amid
the everlasting snows of the pole, or in the abyss of ocean, slumbering
in nameless sepulchres and mausoleums of the mighty deep. Like the
winds that bear and the waves that break around them, they are the
visitors of every clime, the residents of none.... The knowledge of the
community at large in respect to seamen is too often gleaned from the
exaggerated descriptions of novelists.... Every man has in his heart
home feeling. It is an old-fashioned thing. He drew it in with his
mother’s milk. He learned it at his father’s knees. Even sailors are
men. They did not spring from the froth of the sea, like Venus. They
had mothers and fathers that loved them and prayed for them. It is the
heart makes home. It is the heart makes friends in the world. The heart
makes heaven.”
Sailors are ever among the bravest of the brave. Great as is the
appreciation of the American people of the bravery of the men who lined
up behind the guns of our warships in the great war which kept the
Union whole, it is not half great enough.
Neither can we overestimate their loyalty in all great crises of the
nation’s history. It was President Lincoln who pointed out the fact
that in all the general defection of the first period of secession not
a single common seaman proved false to his flag.
In a prayer-meeting at the Mariners’ Church while the war was in
progress a landsman lamented its effect upon the “Jackies.” A
man-of-war’s man arose and said: “What is war to me? What is war to my
shipmates? It brings no increase of peril--only another kind. We have
always faced danger and death and disease. What is it to me whether
danger comes from storms or from batteries? I can kneel down between
the guns and pray as well as in my room at the Sailors’ Home.”
For patriotism and bravery wherever shown, Mr. Kellogg had the greatest
admiration. Besides the large number of landsmen connected with his
church who entered the service, over two hundred of the inmates of
the Sailors’ Home joined the army and more than six hundred the navy
during the war. With many of these, Mr. Kellogg kept in touch through
frequent correspondence, and looked after their personal needs. He
loved them all. He often sent necessities and delicacies to his“boys”
at the front. In one of the early battles,[3] one of the young men of
whom mention has been made as receiving arms at his hands in a Sunday
evening prayer-meeting was wounded. He at once visited the hospital
to which the young man had been taken, secured a furlough for him,
provided him liberally with necessities, brought him to Boston, and
sent him to his home in Maine for a visit to his father and mother.
[3] Here, again, the reference is to Mr. Kimball.--W. B. M.
The results of Mr. Kellogg’s great work for seamen were often not
apparent. His sailor parishioners were scattered throughout the
world. In speaking of this, he once said: “If a person on shore is
converted, it immediately becomes known to a church of perhaps six
hundred members; if he leads a devoted Christian life, his influence is
felt by thousands. But these Harlan Pages of the ocean, who pray with
messmates, speak good words to shipmates in the middle watch, maintain
a Christian life on board frigates which have been compared to floating
hells enlivened once in a while by a drowning--who writes their
memoirs? What stone records their virtues? What periodical chronicles
their death? They slip quietly to heaven unnoticed and unknown. Their
bier is a plank across the lee gunwale, their mausoleum the ocean,
their epitaph is written in water. And when the report circulates in
the forecastles of different vessels, some old sailor, dashing a tear
from his eye with his shirt-sleeve, exclaims to his shipmates, ‘Well,
he has gone to heaven. He saved my soul, and he would have saved the
whole ship’s company if they had listened to him.’”
The visible results of Mr. Kellogg’s work, however, were from the
first encouraging. During the winter of 1858, the great revival was
fully felt. Many were brought to Christ. The next year the interest
continued, not only at the church and the Sailors’ Home, but at sea.
At the Home 276 signed the temperance pledge and 95 were converted.
Good work was also done at the hospital in Chelsea. That winter word
was received that four members of the Mariners’ Church were holding
prayer-meetings on board the _Hartford_, flagship of the squadron then
in Chinese waters, and that a lieutenant, the fleet surgeon, a ship’s
doctor, a gunner, two midshipmen, six petty officers, and twenty-five
seamen had been converted. Prayer-meetings were then being held upon
fifteen other men-of-war. The next year also showed good results. In
1861, Mr. Kellogg was able to report seventy-four conversions at the
Sailors’ Home, fifty-five on the receiving-ship _Ohio_, twenty-eight
at the hospital in Chelsea, thirty-seven at sea, and a number at the
church. Statistics show the conversion of 725 during his ministry of
eleven years.
The high esteem in which Mr. Kellogg was held by the other clergymen of
Boston was well expressed in 1862 by Dr. Todd of the Central Church.
Speaking at an annual meeting of the society from which Mr. Kellogg was
forced to be absent by a serious attack of lung fever, Dr. Todd said:--
“I regret exceedingly the absence to-day of one who is the life and
soul of this work in this city, whose treasured experience, given in
his racy way, is wont to enliven this anniversary. I regret exceedingly
the cause of his detention. But I may take advantage of his absence to
bear some slight testimony to the preciousness of the influence which
he is exerting. Apart from his successes among seamen, for which he
is eminently qualified by the characteristics of his nature, as well
as the tastes of his heart, he is diffusing an untold influence in
other spheres. I presume that there is not an evangelical clergyman in
this city who cannot gratefully trace among his people, and especially
among the young men of his congregation, the quickening and healthful
influence of the pastor of the Mariners’ Church.”
A year later the decline in the merchant marine began to be seriously
felt. It was said to be due to the sale of a large number of vessels
to the English and the change in destination of others, many going to
England and the Continent which formerly would have come to Boston and
New York. This diversion of commerce was believed to be due to the
prevailing high rates of exchange. Then, of course, a great many of
the men who had manned our merchant vessels had been absorbed by the
army and navy. Just before this decline began, a competent authority
had estimated that throughout the world at least one hundred and forty
thousand merchant vessels of all kinds were afloat, manned by a million
men, and that one-third of these were under the flag of the United
States.
These changes in our commerce and this falling off in American seamen
greatly lessened the number of inmates at the Sailors’ Home, and
seriously weakened the Mariners’ Church. Then, too, a new element had
occupied Fort Hill and the adjacent streets. The growth of business
was crowding people southward and westward, comfortable homes giving
way to commercial establishments. These things, together with an
intention which Mr. Kellogg had long cherished of entering upon a
literary career, caused him to think seriously of resigning his
position. During the summer of 1865 he did so, and was soon after
succeeded by the Rev. J. M. H. Dow.
The foregoing is but a glimpse of Elijah Kellogg’s work in Boston. In
its entirety, that work is known only to God and the Recording Angel.
Its influence was widely felt upon sea and land. Thousands of sailors
upon lonely waters were made happier by it, and up among the hills,
under the trees, at many a farm-house window, sad faces that looked out
and watched for their dear ones’ coming brightened at the remembrance
that they had been led to Christ through the efforts of this seaman’s
friend.
Mr. Kellogg was a saintly, lovable man, and but for his modesty,
shunning, as he often did, the leading churches of the day, because of
what he termed their “starch and formality,” he would have been named
and known among the great preachers of his time.
AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY’S EYES
WILLIAM OLIVER CLOUGH
When and under what circumstances I made the acquaintance of the Rev.
Elijah Kellogg I do not now recall. The place, however, was Boston,
and I persuade myself that the time was the winter of 1856-1857,
during what was mentioned in the newspapers of that day as the “Finney
revival.” I was then an errand boy in a jewelry store, a member of the
Park Street Church Sunday-school and congregation, and spent many of
my evenings out--for I slept in the store--at the rooms of the Young
Men’s Christian Association, then in Tremont Temple. It was probably at
the last-mentioned place that Mr. Kellogg came into my life, and now,
looking back over the years that have passed, I acknowledge that I have
cause for gratitude that I did not resist the love and friendship that
he generously bestowed upon me.
Those of us, his friends and admirers, who recall the dignified manners
and solemn utterances of the good old clergyman of our grandfathers’
days--on whose approach to the old homestead we fled like a brood of
frightened chickens--do not find in him a counterpart. He was like yet
unlike them, and it was the unlikeness that attracted young people to
him and compelled them whether they would or no to follow where he led.
It was that he had been a boy--the old school clergyman never gave
evidence of such weakness--and that it seemed no condescension on his
part to be a boy again with boys, when by so being he could keep them
out of mischief and as he was wont to say “headed up the stream.” More
than this he knew how to “get at boys.” He had a purpose in it all.
Many boys did not in my boyhood days--and I assume that they are the
same in all generations--take kindly to being told that unless they
turned over a new leaf and joined the church they would surely go to
the devil. Mr. Kellogg knew this and was ever on the watch to discover
their plans and ambitions, and, apart from sermons,--for he could get
them in in the proper place,--encourage them to strive for success,
while incidentally warning them of the pitfalls in their path. In a
word, he had an intuitive knowledge of the character of the person upon
whom he would impress the better way of life, and knew just how much
religious talk he would stand and still come to him with his burdens
and for advice. His attitude always seemed to be that religion--as men
profess it--was in a large degree dependent upon education in honesty
and sincerity of purpose in the things that are nearest at hand, in the
affairs of everyday life, that if the twig were but rightly bent, thus
the tree would incline. He was indeed a reverend schoolmaster.
Hardly a week passed between the date I have tried to fix and the
time I left Boston in 1870, when, if Mr. Kellogg was in the city, I
did not meet him somewhere in his wanderings. I do not recall that I
ever attended services at the Mariners’ Church on Summer Street, over
which he was for many years pastor, on a Sunday morning or afternoon.
Sunday evening was the time. It was then that the larger half of the
Park Street Church boys and girls ran away, as the annoyed deacons put
it, and went to Mr. Kellogg’s meeting. No matter what the weather
happened to be or what the attractions were at home, the young people
into whose lives Mr. Kellogg had forged his way went where he was to
be found. They had done their duty by their own church, and they must
do their duty by Father Kellogg; and so it happened that year after
year the Seaman’s Bethel was crowded to overflowing on Sunday night,
the middle of the house being reserved for Jack, and the wall pews for
the boys and girls. Incidentally, and always in the right place, the
preacher gave us the advice that was withheld in social and friendly
intercourse. In an up-to-date way of expressing it, he “got it all in.”
Father Kellogg, having followed the sea in his youth, had a good many
odd ways of saying things that were pleasing to us. Here are some that
I now recall:--
The writer said to him one day: “The deacons at Park Street are greatly
offended because you take us away from them on Sunday night, and have
expostulated with us.” “That reminds me of an old couple in our state”
(“our” is accounted for by the fact that the writer is a native of
Gray), he replied. “The wife was a strapping woman of more than two
hundred pounds and the husband was a little fellow of not much over
one hundred pounds. She abused him past the endurance of a block. Her
tongue was forever going. She gave him no rest, no peace. Some one said
to him, ’Why don’t you turn about and give her as good as she sends?’
and he replied, ’Oh, but it amuses her and it doesn’t hurt me any!’ And
that is how it is with the deacons and me. The boys and girls will come
to the Bethel just the same.” He was right about it.
Father Kellogg was standing in his accustomed place one night in front
of the pulpit, watching the ushers and showing anxiety through fear
that sittings would not be found for all comers, when, after looking
about, he pointed to one of the pews, and this is what he said:-- “Six
persons may be comfortably seated in those wall pews. There are only
five in that pew. Why won’t you take another reef in your mainsails,
ladies, and accommodate one more?” The ladies blushed and reefed.
One night, when temperance was the theme, he paused, and directing his
conversation to some boys who were whispering, remarked: “I sometimes
wonder how it will be with young men who cannot behave in Boston, where
there are so many policemen to watch them, when they get into that far
country where there are no policemen. You’d better cast anchor, boys.”
This anecdote is on the writer. My companion was one of the young
ladies of Park Street, and I was feeling just a bit proud of myself.
We were on hand in time, and had good seats against the wall. Distress
came upon me by reason of new and tight-fitting shoes. I had slipped
them off and put them under the seat, and was as peaceful and contented
as a bug in a rug. Presently the crowd came, and there was a demand for
seats. Spying other boys and me, this is how he fixed us: “Here, John,
Thomas, Ezra, Henry, and William, come this way and sit on the pulpit
steps.” All the other boys started. I kept my seat. I was in a fix.
Then he spoke a second time. “Come, come, no hanging back!” Taking the
shoes in my hand, I went as directed. The boys and girls laughed, and
he comforted me by saying: “I sat on the pulpit steps many a time when
I was a boy. It didn’t hurt me, and it won’t hurt you.”
One night just before the benediction he said very earnestly: “I wish
the congregation would exhibit less haste to be dismissed. When the
last verse of the hymn is being sung, you throw your books into the
rack with a nervous thud that sounds like the ’ram-cartridge’ of a
regiment of raw militia. Kindly hold the books in your hands until
after the benediction.”
On one occasion when he was talking about politeness as apart from
selfishness, this is how he got back at some of us, “Now I suppose if
you were travelling in a crowded horse-car, and a tired mother with a
baby in her arms, or a feeble old man with bundles in his hands, got
aboard, you would give up your seat even if you had paid for it--but I
happen to know that there are some of your elders who won’t do it.” I
never knew whom he fired that shot at.
A transient man (speaking in meeting one night) bemoaned the fact that
some of the tunes to which hymns were sung were theatre refrains, and
unholy. “What!” exclaimed Father Kellogg, “you wouldn’t give all the
good music to the devil, would you?” The stranger sat down.
One cold, blustery day Father Kellogg came to the store on Milk Street
where I was employed, with a tale of sorrow. He had discovered a sick
family. There was no food or fuel in the house, and he had no money
in his purse. He must raise $3 immediately. Every one contributed on
the instant, and he obtained nearly $4. There was a tear in his eye
when he went out, and probably having in mind that some of us were
theatre-goers or billiard-players, or something else--he turned to me,
and remarked aside, “Old Satan will be about $4 short to-night!”
It should not be understood from the foregoing that my recollection of
Father Kellogg and my admiration for him are based on and began and
ended with a few little anecdotes incidental to evening meetings at the
church over which he was the honored pastor. I knew him in the broad
field, the world. He frequently spent an hour of the evening with me
at the store which was my only home, and where half the evenings in
the week I was alone as watchman after closing hours; here he often
related his experiences as a sailor--much of which was afterward woven
into his stories--and corrected the compositions I had written as a
student at the Mercantile Library Association then located on Summer
Street. More than this, he knew most of the boys and young men of
the association, and dropped in occasionally to hear them speak his
declamations and to encourage them in their studies. Later he was wont
to call at my boarding-place, as he did at boarding-places of other
homeless young men in that great city, to look after me and make me
feel that some one cared for me. In those years I went occasionally
with him and others to his week-day meetings at the Marine Hospital in
Chelsea to“help out in the singing,”--as he was pleased to put it,--and
to more other places than it would be interesting to mention here. On
most of these occasions he “stood treat” on soda or ice-cream somewhere
on the tramp, and, as I now discover, was always endeavoring to keep us
interested and out of reach of temptation. In after years and following
my departure from Boston, I used to find him at the Athenæum on Beacon
Street where--after giving up his church duties--he spent most of his
time when writing his books. These meetings were the joy and pride of
my life, and from them I always obtained new courage to persevere in
my profession. And here let me say that of all the boys of 1857-1870 I
know of but one who has made a misfit of life; and over his misfortunes
I throw, as I know Father Kellogg would were he still among us, the
broadest mantle of charity.